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Commentary
AGING WELL: Never too old to learn or teach Missy Buchanan, Aug 4, 2008
Missy Buchanan
By Missy Buchanan Special Contributor
Everyone in my Disciple Bible Study class looked forward to the night that Maggie brought refreshments. At 80-something years old, she still made an oatmeal pie that would make the angels sing.
Long before class was to start, Maggie’s husband, Ed, would unload their car, laden with homemade goodies. They worked in sync, setting up a table-long spread. Then under Maggie’s watchful gaze, the rest of us piled our paper plates until they sagged. She spoiled us like a generous grandmother, and we loved her for it.
Based on her culinary skill, you would not have known that Maggie could barely see or hear. She had severe macular degeneration that rendered her almost blind. Unless you were talking slowly and loudly in her “good” ear, she couldn’t understand what you were saying.
But those physical limitations never kept her from stretching her mind while she stretched our waist sizes.
Through four years of Disciple classes, my husband and I sat across from Maggie and Ed. Each Sunday evening, I watched as she methodically arranged her study materials on the table. Along with her well-worn Bible and study manual, she brought out a large magnifying glass to help her read the large-print.
During lively discussion, Maggie would often break into a 100-watt smile that would bathe the room in pure joy. If classmates spoke too softly or were talking at once, Ed would lean over to Maggie’s “good” ear. Using a super-sized stage whisper, he would lovingly translate all she had missed.
When Maggie died a few years ago, the image of her sitting in Bible study came rushing back to me. It is a tender scene forever etched in my memory: Maggie, with her magnifying glass, hovering over Scripture; Maggie searching for a comment she’d written in the margin of her manual; Maggie wondering aloud about the meaning of a certain passage.
At 80-something years, she was still eager to learn.
Sitting at her memorial service, I watched as endearing photographs flashed on the screen. There was one of Maggie’s knitting basket and her favorite chair; another of Maggie with a fishing pole in hand; Maggie at a picnic table surrounded by members of her Sunday school class.
Through misty eyes, I glanced at the aging members of her class who were seated together in the front rows. I knew them to be much like Maggie. Faithful, older adults who know we can never out-learn God.
Suddenly I was struck by a truth. I fumbled for a pen and wrote on the back of the memorial bulletin. “We are never too old to learn; never too old to teach.”
In that moment, I wondered if these older adults knew how much they teach the rest of us—about perseverance, about faithfulness, about never being spiritually retired.
It’s a truth only God could imagine. As we learn, we also teach. Even as we grow old.
I suspect there are other Maggies in this world. At least I hope so. Wonderful role models with gray hair who still thirst for learning and who teach us by the way they live.
But only my Maggie could make an oatmeal pie that would make the angels sing.
Ms. Buchanan, a member of FUMC Rockwall, Texas, is the author of Living with Purpose in a Worn Out Body. For Maggie’s oatmeal pie recipe, e-mail missy@missybuchanan.com.
Missy Buchanan
